March 22, 2011

Have you ever felt when you first take a look at a mini that this mini is awful and adds nothing to the range it was made for?

That was my initial feeling on the fire dragons, at first instance I took a look and thought "Meh, this minis are totally like the old ones, but kinda taller", but when I bought the box and start to paint them I was amazed of how the fire dragons were updated while still showing the same spirit of the old classic ones, so they become one of my favourite minis of the whole range.

The only thing I don´t like is how plain they look together while looking at the same direction, but this is totally compensated by the exarch, a truly loveable mini indeed.

And another question:

Have you ever felt when you first take a look at a rulebook that a unit isn´t that good for the role that is supposedly assigned for?

When I first put my eyes on the Eldar codex I saw this guys and my thoughts went to the tau codex, in which a unit, with the aproppriate upgrades can target more than a single unit making the XV-88 apoc suits a very reliable anti tank unit.

The dragons cannot do this so they have to shoot the same unit, overkilling most of the things, but while reading the book again I realized that the tankhunting role can be taken by the Wave Serpents and Falcons (or even vypers and seer council) and make the dragons change his (fluffy) role into chase and hunt termies or powered armor guys and to pop tank squadrons, and, indeed they seem to be really good at it.

Now one very important question is... Should the exarch pick up the flamer or the pike?

I like the flamer, It is a very good weapon, but since most of the armies are pillboxed into transports the´flamer isn´t as useful as it used to be (one at a time, of course, cause some destructor warlocks or a huge ork burna squad are uber IMHO) so I decided to put the pike on the exarch, and if later I buy another box I will use the flamer to diferenciate the units.

So my idea is, put a 6 man (5 + exarch with pike) into a bright lanced falcon and throw them out hunting armoured foes and tank squadrons.

And here they are my 6 (5+1) squad.

I kept the craftworld scheme, cause I don´t like the eldar armies that look like an explosion in a paint shop so I adapted the scheme to fit this guys.

The grenade tossing guy in a close view so you can see the scheme better.

March 15, 2011

Today, here they are one of the coolest (although not the most useful) troop units in the 40k universe, the rangers/pathfinders.

I´ve ever liked ´em, the fluff, the long coats, the craftworld colours almost hidden under their garments, the sniper stuff... they will always have a spot in my lists, even when I know they are not the best troops, but they still are very reliable objective takers, if you make they run away of the flamers, of course.

Here they are the guys.

At the moment they are a 5 man squad, but I´ll buy and paint 5 more (I´m still thinking about buying the "special" model in GW page)

I wanted a leather effect in the trenchcoats, so they were painted as follows:

Primer: Citadel Chaos Black.

Basecoat: Citadel Foundation Khemri Brown.

Ink: Citadel Badab Black (heavy wash).

First highlight: Khemri Brown once again.

Final highlight: Tallarn Flesh.

In this image you can see better the leather effect, the badab black makes the recesses so dark and the Tallarn Flesh make a soft bright in the coats.

As you can see their backpacks are well detailed, and this makes the backpack a very important thing in this mini, cause if you paint them in a way that fits the rest of the mini they will enhance the final look of it, but if not they will seem totally out of place.

Having this in mind, I´ve painted the packs the same way as the patfinders, using the same technique for the browns and using the same whites so they don´t broke the main scheme.

The buttons for the rifle sheath are metallic while the buttons of the pockets are little red gems (just a curiosity).

I have tried to maintain the craftworld colours at a minimum, but still recognisable, cause they will be infiltrating everywhere but are (ironically) proud renegades of the craftworld.

I think these are very good minis and a pleasure to paint, as are most of the eldar range, and there is a thing that I consider as a great success in the latter miniatures:

Look at the photo below, now whatch how the boot shapes where the kneepad should be, that makes a very huge step to reality, cause when you see the mini you think that the boot is standing outside the classic eldar armour (which is not, cause, after all, it is a pewter miniature) and gives a sense of a dressed guy, and not the sense of a chunk of metal, that is a little but nice detail that make the latter miniatures a lot better than the older ones.

March 8, 2011

Today I´m going to show you the artisan guys that are called to the army when need arises, the Guardians.

It´s kind of strange for a dying race to send their civil people to war, but hey, who am I to question the wisdom of the millenia aged farseers (and the way games-workshop did the eldar fluff...).

Thing is that I don´t like the horde-type eldar army, I find totally out of place a dying race army full of untrained civilians, but still, they are cheap and useful, and came with a Heavy Weapons Platform allowing them to shoot on the run, so, they make good far-from-enemy-assaulters-objective takers.

So here they are the guys.

I´ve painted them in quite a simple scheme, and instead of highlight them as usually, I drybrushed them, so their armour looks clean but old and not well maintained.

All this process except for the final highlights took me about 3 hours for the whole squad (the platform was painted apart)

For the heads:Primer: Citadel skull white (which, after it dried, had a sandy texture that made me curse GW several times, and is the reason these guys don´t have their eyelenses painted).Ink: Badab black.Drybrush: Vallejo Silvergrey.Final highlights: white (citadel or vallejo, I´ve used both in those guys).

March 3, 2011

Today I´m gonna show you my first painted mini for my eldar army: The Autarch (What the plural for autarch is? Autarches, Autarchs or Autarch?).

Things are that the Autarch is supposed to be the pinnacle of eldar fighting, a guy that walked over all the military paths, mastered them and now uses his skills to lead entire eldar armies into war, but the truth is they are ignored by players in lieu of the more classic, useful and psychic powered farseers, or the burning brass encarnation of the bloody hand god that is the Avatar (not the james cameron Tau-esque guys, the ORIGINAL Avatar of Khaine).

I think the Autarch as they are in the codex has a pair of flaws.

First of all, they cannot purchase Exarch powers, which, in my opinion would be cool, fluffy and would make the autarch a very customizable unit (although some players would tweak him into an almost broken combat monster), and will give the Autarch a more prominent role, as well as more survival capabilities.

I´m not saying that they give him the option to buy full array of exarch powers, just some of them limited in number or create even Autarch powers.

The second flaw is the partial lack of equipment. Why, being the peak of the eldar military, cannot they access to exarch equipment?

For example, let them equip with a Triskelion, or warp spiders exarch´s dual web spinners, or a fire pike, etc, that will make them even more customizable and more valuable units in the field.

Or even make some unique Autarch items with rules â la Warhammer Fantasy (I mean, no the classig +1str power weapon or doubles the strength counts as a power weapon kind of weapons.

Thinking a bit I can tell you, apart of solving those flaws (in my opinion, of course), what I would make to the Autarch to invigorate it a bit.

.- If GW want the Autarch to be mostly a leader, then, give him some abilities to do so, for instance, an orders system as in the imperial guard command squad, but call them Warcries or Rune commands or whatever eldar-fluffy and make the autarch affect the behavior and performance of the units in his army... that is what a leader should do, and don´t limit his abilities to a +1 to the reserves roll.

.- Another thing, that is as old and fluffy as the eldar itselves are the names of their leaders, so, take advance of this fluffy and well stablished feature and make a surname system similar to the Space Wolves Sagas system plus Wood Elves hero path system, allowing them to take or compose surnames that gives the autarch some abilities example given:

.-Windrunner: upgrades his fleet of foot rule.

.- Bladeweaver: upgrades his WS skill

.- Dragonrider: alters his skill in a bike.

.- Warphunter: adds some abilities when equipped with a warp generator.

.- Packlord: gives him some leathership tricks.

And so on, something that make us seem the Autarch as the millenia trained combat and tactics master that he should be.

.- The last thing is add another entry in the codex and add an higher level of autarch, that is: The Eldar Prince, equal to the Autarch but better (kind of captain/chapter master difference), which is a concept introduced with Yriel so it won´t be something out of the sleeve.

Apart from this, I like the Autarch model a lot so I painted one as the first mini of my eldar army:

The base needs a little revamp, the paint was torn off because I used the base to handle it while painting and it was painted grey and the bases of my eldar are light brown.

A shot of his backpack so you can see the markings that will be army-wide used.

Also the chunk of metal in which he is standing is supposed to be part of an imperial tank, so I am tempted to paint it in the colours of the space marines chapter of one of my friends (almost everyone of us have a space marine army, that are:

- Ultramarines.

- Imperial Fists.

- Blood angels.

- Dark Angels.

- Space Wolves (my fellow blogmate)

- My Raven Guard (I will not paint my eldars with raven guard bits all over the place, so RG is discarded for this :) ).

- I can also use the Custos Fidis white that fit with my eldar army colours so it will not outstand and doesn´t taunt anyone :D

A detail of the helmet, which I am quite proud of (especially the eye lenses).

I suppose he will be equiped with a fire dragon gun, for tank popping, a power sword for dude killing and a warp generator for high mobility and great chances of retreat if the need arises.

March 1, 2011

I know it has been a long time since our last posts and that is due to a pair of facts.First of all, my fellow blogger Elahir found a job in another city 600 km away from our city, so he has hard times keeping up with the hobby (but eventually he comes and play some games and usually beat the crap out of us).The other fact is my father broke his hip, but since my father got cybernetic body, an Iron Halo, is Stubborn, and has Feel no Pain he is recovering surprisingly well, thanks to his doctor too, which gives the rule "This is a wound? shut the f*ck up and let me do some apothecary tricks in there" that put everyone in the hospital back in their feets in no time with almost no sequels (I think the codex where my father came is a bit overpowered, but... meh, right now I´m pretty happy with it :) ).The thing is I´ve been caring him, but since I´m quite an active guy I´ve been painting some marines, playing some games and, which came up to this post... starting my eldar army.

The eldar were my first "complete" army (since no army is complete ever, IMO), back in the times of 2nd edition, and I´ve loved them since then, indeed, I have the insect mask farseer (1990) waiting to be painted as well as the previous incarnation of the wraithguard, that I think will be painted soon (farseer sure, the others... not so soon).

This is the farseer (indeed I have every mini depicted in this image)

And this two are the wraithguard (they were called Ghost Warriors back then)

Since my childhood group was disbanded (with no reason I can remember), I inherited part of the eldar army, cause we were young without much money to spend and bought the armies as a group, and almost everything of it is lost so I´ve had to start from the almost beginning, not counting my about 15 warlocks, my old farseer, Eldrad, and some other old goodies from a time when GW minis was much much cheaper than today, eldar had access to powerfists and almost everything was made of lead (yep, pewter was not applied to minis at this moment and plastic was a rare thing in our hobby).

So, I´ve started an eldar army once again.

As a side note... I really want to keep it up with the Marines and Tau, but since the Tau codex is going to be updated soon (well, soon in GW standards... you know) I´ve had them in a hiatus of painting, although I am still having games with them, and for the marines... I´m waiting another 10 legs (pairs of, of course) to make two squads of vanguards and two squads of sternguards, but still playing with them too.

The thing is I struggled so much to find a scheme that I like so after some test (brown eldar with blue lenses/jewels and grey eldar with blue lenses/jewels) I decided for a somewhat classic scheme but, as my friends use to say... a bit sad.

My friends think that eldar should be colourful and jelly like, but I don´t like that concept for what the fluff tell us is a dying race, so I painted them with a Shadow Grey base for the blues and Deneb Stone for the whites so this two colours make my army kinda Sad, but that is the way I intended to paint it, so, in contrast of the sadness of my army I´m kinda happy with it :) .

That is the scheme for non guardian units in my army (my guardians are all blue with white helmet):

In the eldar painter this scheme doesn´t seem to be so sad, but that is cause I also used inks (Asurmen blue, How appropriate!!) to darken it a bit, example given: two guardians:

As you can see, the blue becomes kinda sad, cause it seems more a coloured grey than a blue and the white seems kinda darkened.

I have the scheme I wanted... Now what?

Then I read the eldar codex lots of times and played with army builder to know what units I want in my army, which in the grajo+eldar case is not as useful as it seems to be cause I really like every unit in the codex, except maybe the Swooping Hawks, but it was a good start to have some base units to build the army around them so I started with an autarch (I don´t want to paint that farseer untill I have the scheme totally mastered) a ten man guardian squad with its platform and a five man pathfinder squad (although I do prefer the Dire Avengers, but the guardians are soooo easy to paint).

I have to say that I really love the jetbike guardian squads and the wraithguard, but I´ll wait till they get a new biker model and plastic revamp respectively in the new codex, which is mandatory.

Oh, and the biker council too.

After that, Fire Dragons, Fuegan and their falcon, Howling Banshees and their Wave serpent, a pair of Wraithlords...